Search

You’d be surprised how many people make assumptions about authors’ personalities based on their works’ genre. Horror writers have dark, twisted minds and are capable of committing the atrocities they write about. Erotica writers are perverts. Writers of romance tend to be like their heroines—beautiful women who are lavished with flowers, candy and romantic dinners by more lovers than they can handle (and who all resemble Ryan Reynolds, Zac Efron, Gerald Butler, or Idris Elba) And comedic writers––well, they’re all clowns who don’t take life seriously enough. Really? Come on, people!

I have lost count of how many times friends and acquaintances have been shocked when they find out that I write horror and dark fantasy. “But you don’t look like a horror writer,” they say. So what is a writer of horror and dark fantasy supposed to look like?

Is this what I’m supposed to look like?

We writers are unusual creatures, no doubt. We’re in our heads a lot. We often like to sit apart from everyone and just observe. We have outsized imaginations and we can be inspired by almost anything: a picture, a movie, someone’s smile, a word, a laugh . . . anything! But––we are not what we write. Think of us as actors. A great actor can play the role of a psycho, chef, cyborg, monster or saint and be very believable doing it, but that doesn’t mean he or she is any of those things.

There are many genres of writing and even more writers, and I’m not saying that some of us don’t have a few peculiar quirks and habits. What I am saying is that we are all individuals, and the genre we write has nothing to do with who we truly are. So don’t judge a writer by his or her genre. I guess you’ll just have to get to know us.

Yeah, I agree with the fact is that ‘no two writers are alike’. It’s just that ‘every individual is unique’, and that’s what makes it interesting about Humans. It won’t be exciting if everyone around us are one and the same. We can’t learn anything from them if that’s the case. Agreed?

Brilliant post Vashti – you’ve just made me realise that I do exactly that and had never realised it. ha! 🙂

Except I always think of romance writers as slightly dumpy, frumpy ladies of a certain age with a perm and a twin-set, who write romance precisely because they haven’t been whisked off to dinner by Idris Elba (or anyone else) for several decades. Does that make me a bad person??

The only place I disagree with you is Mehitobel (who, by the way, I hadn’t heard of but wins the newly-inaugurated Coolest Name Ever contest) – I think she looks exactly like a female horror writer should. In a very very good way, of course.

Ah, ha,ha,ha,ha! Really? I guess you do have a point about the dumpy, frumpy ladies of romance, but I was thinking the other way around. I used to think romances were written by beautiful women who were writing about their own experiences. Where would dumpy, frumpy women get their information? Then I realized that not all writers of crime thrillers are cops or cons, and not all sci-fi writers are mad scientists. Ha,ha!
Yeah, Mehitobel does have a mysterious, witchy vibe, doesn’t she? Damn! Oh well, she’s such a great writer I had to mention her. I’m so happy you enjoyed the post! 😀

All those heaving bodices and lusty farmhands are the stuff of pure imagination from those frustrated spinsters 🙂 Mind you, that just shows I don’t read romance novels doesn’t it? It’s probably all porn and post-modernism now!

Ha,ha! Well, I don’t know. I don’t read romance novels either. Never been into them. I do know one thing, whether frumpy or fabulous those romance writers are smart, and they’re laughing all the way to the bank, since romance novels are the #1 selling genre. 😉

I guess it happens in many other walks of life. I’m a psychiatrist and I remember showing my cousin photos of colleagues of mine I was working with and he told me they didn’t look like psychiatrist. I guess he thought all psychiatrists should look like Freud.

Great post! It’s so easy to be put in a box by others, but the only thing is we never fit. It’s funny in that I get more strange looks for being an author than when people learn I write mostly epic fantasy. lol

Hi Gaye! I’m sorry you lost the comment. I think we’ve all done this at some point in our lives, but since I am now an author and have also befriended many writers of different genres I have certainly learned my lesson. 😉

Haha! This makes a lot of sense. I can see both sides of it. I feel like we never truly know what people are capable of so being shocked that they are one way or another is just because of our preconceived judgments about what we are able to see about them from our small window of a perspective. But so many people are out of the boxes that we categorize people into. I guess as you live, sometimes you learn this.:)

I think we all make judgements based on peoples professions or hobbies. I know I do. For example I went to a mode railway thing this weekend and had made all sort of judgements about the type of person I expected to be into model railway stuff. I was so wrong. interesting isn’t it the judgements (and mistakes we make!) #readwithme

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

[…] fellow author friend Vashti Quiroz-Vega shared her blog post, Do You Judge An Author By His or Her Genre? This resonated with me because I remember being taken aback when I first read Vashti’s blog. […]